'A Life Half-Forgotten' (2018).
James Burns is a Georgia-based graphic designer and animator for television, who began creating autobiographical comics later in life, for instance his long-running slice-of-life feature 'Grumbles' (2004-2021). Several of his graphic novels have dealt with personal health issues, such as 'Detached' (2005), 'A Life Half-Forgotten' (2018) and 'The Death of Me?' (2025). James Burns the cartoonist should not be confused with the British painter Jim Burns or the American writer James H. Burns.
Early life and graphic design career
James Burns was born in 1959 in Columbus, Ohio, and received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Cincinnati in 1981. After working at a frame shop in Ohio for a couple of years, he moved to Atlanta, Georgia, to work in an art supply store. Burns then started working for his brother's company Television by Design, where he designed and animated station packages, nowadays known as "motion graphics". Among his productions were news opens, broadcast promos and other animated visuals for television stations. After that he worked for Ted Turner at WTBS, working on documentary opens, movie promos, wrestling opens and the like. After a period working for the Gannett Corporation doing graphics for their television stations, he went freelance as a graphic designer and commercial illustrator in 1999. James Burns has spent most of his professional life in Georgia, first in Atlanta and since the mid-2010s in Athens. In 2023, he retired from his commercial art work.
'Detached' (2005).
Debut in comics
Even though Burns had an early interest in comics and visual storytelling, he never felt he had a story he wanted to tell. This changed in 2002, when he was diagnosed with detached retinas in both eyes, which threatened his eyesight. After recovering, at age 45, he wrote, drew and self-published his first comic book, 'Detached' (2005), which dealt with the experience, as well as the fears and doubts connected with it. Since then, he has continued to work on both autobiographical and fiction comics, which he has self-published both as trade paperbacks and digital editions, for sale through the Indyplanet platform. An important influence on his comic work has been Jack Kirby.
'Grumbles' episode from 2016.
Grumbles
While working on 'Detached', Burns also created the weekly comic strip 'Grumbles', which ran for six-and-half years (2004-2011) in Atlanta's alternative news weekly The Sunday Paper. From the viewpoint of a grumpy, idealistic middle-aged man, this semi-autobiographical comic strip commented with ironic and sarcastic humor on politics, petty annoyances, culture wars, the apocalypse, bad drivers, hypocrisy, and life in the USA. When the Sunday Paper folded, Burns took a short hiatus from the comic, and then continued it on his Tumblr page from 2013 until 2021. 'Grumbles' has been collected in twelve annual book volumes. In a similar tradition, Burns released 'The House of Covid' (2021), a part memoir, part fiction, part documentary comic dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, larded with political commentary.
'Daemon Process' (2006).
Fiction comics
During the 2000s, Burns also began working on a variety of fiction comics, starting with Daemon Process (2006), a supernatural tale of death, love, computers, and an ancient, evil book. In 2008, Burns created and edited the anthology 'Real Magicalism', a comics and prose collection filled with stories about "that certain state between waking and sleeping, the nexus between the real and unreal, where things aren’t always what they seem." Among the contributors were Mark Campos, Egg Embry, Jason Flowers, Ron Fortier, Chris Hamer, Jesse Jarnow, Gonzalo Martinez, Bobby Nash, Jessi Nelson, Jaymes Reed, Terry Staats, Damion Suomi, and Matthew Warlick.
His next projects were tributes to the comic book superheroes of yesteryear, when Nazis and Communists were the main adversaries. With writer Bobby Nash, he created pulpy 1940s superhero 'Lance Star: Sky Ranger One Shot!' (2009), and with artist Don Thomas, he created the 1960s-themed 'The Astral Crusader' (2009). Burns' next story collection 'Über-Tales' (2013) not only dealt with superhero satire, but also with spy adventures, mythic revenge stories, high-flying WWII adventure and end-times parables.
'The Death of Me?' (2025).
Graphic medicine
However, James Burns has remained mostly active with autobiographical comics. Over the years, several of his stories were included in the 'Not My Small Diary' series, an anthology produced yearly by Delaine Derry Green. His later graphic novel work has been in the graphic medicine genre, dealing with several medical issues he had to endure. In 2010, Burns released 'Speechless', about losing his voice after a thyroid cancer biopsy and thyroidectomy. His next work was the graphic memoir 'A Life Half-Forgotten', about growing up in Central Ohio suburbia during the 1960s and 1970s. Dealing with the nature of memory, the story starts with recollections of an idyllic middle-class white suburban upbringing, when all of a sudden all the forgotten traumas rise to the surface.
The comic book 'The Fall' (2022) documented Burns' experiences, both physical and psychological, after a nasty fall on the streets. Written nearly in real time, the comic documented the fall, the diagnoses, and what happened to the artist during his recovery. Burns' 2023 graphic novel 'Old Man on Campus' documented his experienes when returning to college, after learning that through a special program residents of the state of Georgia over the age of 62 are eligible for free college tuition.
Unfortunately, his next project again had to deal with health issues again. Diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer, James Burns began recording his experience with EBRT (radiation therapy) in the comic 'The Death of Me?' (2025). The digital comic has been made available for free at malecare.org.
Comic book cover with self-portrait.